


forward

by Anonymous



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Gen, like. heavy angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 12:56:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20639540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: “Oh,” says the Joker. “Oh, you.”The blood lingers in Dick’s mouth.





	forward

“Oh,” says the Joker. “Oh, _you.”_

The blood lingers in Dick’s mouth, and he hopes it gleams pink on his teeth as he flashes a gruesome, pithy smile at the psycho. Joker’s hands roam across his face, fingers dragging along his jawline. They’re clammy, even under the gloves, and the sensation only worsens when Joker yanks the gloves off. His nails are saffron, bright against the crinkled pallor of his skin, and they scratch dangerously close to Dick’s eyes as he rips Dick’s mask off.

Dick’s heart doesn’t race. Dick Grayson isn’t a household name, and he certainly isn’t a household face; it’s unlikely that Joker will make a new connection if he hasn’t already. Even if his identity is lost, laid bare to the world yet again, it’s better him than Bruce.

Joker almost coos, rocking onto the balls of his feet and miming surprise as his hands splay over his thin, scabbed lips. “Oh.” He laughs. “_Oh.” _He laughs. “My goodness. My golly-gosh. You are handsome.” His thumb smears old blood a millimeter below Dick’s eyes. The nail scrapes his eyelashes. “I mean, a hunk, a _hunk, _don’t get me wrong, with the mask on, but you’re just—” He laughs. He laughs. “You’re just a doll. Boy, do _I_ get it now. Why Batman’s so…_crazy_ about you.” Joker drops to his knees to inch closer to him.

The thick chains around Bruce’s arms thunder as he rattles them.

Joker inhales sharply, wild-eyed. “Giving me a little run for my money. Giving me a little competition, aren’t you? Aren’t you? Splitting the votes for Gotham’s most eligible bachelor.” His pale eyes roll in his head, and the loud, ugly clatter of his lungs rattles like Bruce’s chains. His gaze finds Dick’s again, and his hands go fizzing out, slinging his fingers wide as he clenches and unclenches them into erratic fists. The edges of his smile jump. “And we can’t have that, can we?”

Dick knows not to provoke the Joker. He knows not to play along. He knows not to taunt. He knows better.

“You know, bird boy,” he says airily, flicking a long, wide blade out of his sleeve. “I like you much better like this. Quiet. You always grated me when you were,” a violent hand flutter at Damian, “him. You thought you were _so_ funny.”

The knife’s kissing his cheek. Dick knows better. Dick knows better. Dick knows better. “I’m sort of the whole package, you know. Got it all. Looks. Humor. No blood on my hands.” _Focus on me. Don’t even let him _look_ at Damian again._

“There!” Joker’s eyes slat, crinkling at the edges as he laughs. “That’s the thing I _hate!” _The venom in his voice abates somehow, shifting into something tumid and faux-intellectual. “One of many.” His gaze levels with Dick’s, and the genuine, mephitic glint is back. “You’re the worst one. You’re the _worst_ one.” His volume skids up.

There’s a centimeter between them now. The space is shrinking. Dick channels Bruce, colors his face calm, steady-eyed, but a feeling acquainted with dread begins to solidify in the pit of his stomach. He blinks. Suddenly, he wants to look at Damian again. To look at Bruce again. Wants to catch their eyes, to reassure and be reassured respectively. He doesn’t. He keeps his gaze fixed on the Joker, on the icy smear of his eyes and the fuzzy, grotesque shore of his eyebrows, even as the knife’s tip drags against Dick’s lower lip.

The chains around Dick feel heavier now, and Dick can’t pinpoint the reason for this new sense of emergence, but he’s almost overtaken by it. _You’ve done this a million times._

But Joker’s jittery again, and the blade yanks away, ending the sharp, bright sting against Dick’s mouth, and his shoulders begin to move like he’s turning around.

Stall. Keep him away from Bruce and Damian. “And here I thought I was your favorite.”

A raucous, shrill guffaw. “You’re only better than the dead one.”

The constant pulse of Bruce’s movement quiets for a moment. God. Dick wishes he could see Bruce—the stolid color of his eyes behind the cowl’s lenses or even just the perennially flat, calm expression on his face, even through the gag. Maybe Bruce’s even almost free. Maybe it’s not the Joker’s dig about Jason that silences the chains; maybe he got out. But the silence soaks the moment, and all Dick can see is the moth-holed violet plane of Joker’s bony shoulder.

The chains resume. Again, Dick thinks, _You’ve done this a million times,_ but he points his thought at Bruce this time.

“Although.” His white hands find an old, yellowing bruise on Dick’s cheek, pushing. Then he pulls away, pressing the two ends of the blade between his fingers and looking at it enamoredly. “Now that _he’s_ back, he’s _ruining_ my record. Now that he’s back, I can’t say I’ve killed a Robin.” A faint, fizzy laugh. “It’s like I told you all those years ago, Batsy. Give-take. Give-take. Now I’ve got to balance it all out. Got to balance it all out.”

Dick goes still as the realization sinks in. Damian audibly strains against the metal, grunting.

“You’re not my favorite, bird boy.” Joker taps Dick’s nose with the knife. His smile stretches for miles. “But you’re his.”

Dick waits a moment. Takes a breath. Tries to memorize things, just in case. The smoothness of the suit. The starry bursts of new air in his lungs. The gleaming feeling when someone’s okay after a prevented mugging or a burnt building or a close call. The coarse sound of Damian’s laughter. The dimples in Tim’s cheeks when his baby brother finally relaxes. The lull of Jason’s voice when he’s too tired to speak. The orchid smell of Alfred’s favorite tea. The blue whistle of air on the trapeze. The roughness of Zitka’s trunk. The soft, wonderful, beautiful, perfect feeling of chalk on his hands before a show. The achingly clear brown color of his mother’s eyes while she was angry. The callouses on his palms from trying so hard it hurt. Things to feel; things to see.

“You know what I think?” Dick says. His throat feels hot. “You just can’t take the competition.” The quip is weak, but it’s there. He flashes his teeth again, and the chill in the air bites at his gums, at the cuts across his face. It’s a visceral moment.

And the knife’s at his throat, dragging.

—

The Joker’s back blocks Dick’s body from view. Bruce is restrained a meter to the left of Damian, but he can’t see Dick. There’s some sort of fixation with Dick that the Joker has tonight.

The knife glimmers behind Joker’s back, and every time Dick’s voice breaks the cement silence, Bruce jolts with relief.

“You just can’t take the competition.”

The knife moves out of Bruce’s sight, sawing. There’s a gasping sound, and the Joker whirls around, yellow-toothed and beaming, and his hands are soaked like tongues with wine-dark blood. His eyes are almost white, giddy, when they meet Bruce’s gaze, and a hard sudden pressure erupts on the inside of Bruce’s chest, forcing his sternum down until he thinks it might crack. No. No. No.

Bruce thrashes. The chains sear and strain against his skin. Joker’s legs are bowed. In the gap, Dick’s slackening, head lolling, and his bare, wide eyes are like chips of hard glass. Across his throat is a long, black line, and the blood is everywhere and everything.

“Give.” Joker takes a slow, deep bow, giggling. “Take.”

Bruce runs through the odds in his head, hopes to God that Joker only cut the jugular. If Bruce could get out of the damn chains, he could fix things. Direct pressure. Immediate medical intervention. It would be close maybe, too close certainly, but Dick would wake up and he’d smile at Bruce and he’d sign, I bet this was all just a ploy to shut me up, H-U-H, with his calloused fingers and halfhearted sign language, and he’d heal. It would be okay, even if it was the carotid, so long as Bruce was able to help.

How long had it been. How many minutes. Bruce strains like Atlas, and the chains creak where they attach to the wall but don’t give. He yanks again, teeth baring, tearing his gaze between Joker and Dick. Joker’s face is red with blood. Everything is. For a foot, maybe a meter, around Dick, there’s darkness; there’s blood. It is everywhere, thick. Dick is dusk-still. His brown eyes throb, glossy. For a halved moment, his irises flick to Bruce, but there they lull. 

“Nightwing,” he heaves. “Nightwing.”

But he‘s lulled.


End file.
